


The Choices We Make

by Gerec



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 02:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9471833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec
Summary: Soulmate AU: The minute he meets Erik, Charles is positive he's found his soulmate. When Erik's name fails to appear on his body, he's confused, but dismisses it as being too faint to see yet or some other quirk that happens occasionally. Time goes on and he still can't find Erik's name, through the beach, through Kennedy, through Vietnam, even though he looks every day, then every week, then only every so often.Then as he's showering to pull himself together and go to break Erik out of the Pentagon and he sees the dark letters on the inside of his wrist: LOGAN.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [theapolis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theapolis/pseuds/theapolis) in the [xmenrarepairs17](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs17) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Soulmate AU: The minute he meets Erik, Charles is positive he's found his soulmate. When Erik's name fails to appear on his body, he's confused, but dismisses it as being too faint to see yet or some other quirk that happens occasionally. Time goes on and he still can't find Erik's name, through the beach, through Kennedy, through Vietnam, even though he looks every day, then every week, then only every so often.
> 
> Then as he's showering to pull himself together and go to break Erik out of the Pentagon and he sees the dark letters on the inside of his wrist: LOGAN.
> 
> Author's Note: Magda and Nina survive the confrontation in the woods. :D

The others clear out of the temple one by one, until only the four of them remain. He watches as Logan moves across the room to stand next to Kitty, and gives her arm a quick, reassuring squeeze. The two share a smile - a little forced, and a little hopeful - lost in their own thoughts as the minutes tick by, relentlessly counting down towards the Sentinels’ imminent arrival.

He turns his focus back to Erik standing at his side, face somber and his mouth set in a grim line. Charles reaches for him, physically with a hand curled around his wrist, and mentally in their minds, imagining his bare fingers tracing the letters of his name written on Erik’s skin.

_If this works…_

_Then everything changes,_ Charles replies _. This world; it will have never existed._

 _But we’ll be together in the new world too,_ Erik insists. Always so implacable his Erik, Charles thinks but doesn’t share.

_Perhaps, or perhaps it’ll be one change of many._

_And is it worth it? This sacrifice…_ our _sacrifice?_

Charles answers, his conviction – to save Erik, to save them all from annihilation – pushing any doubts and misgivings to the wayside.

_It is. It has to be._

“So I wake up in my younger body, God knows where. Then what?” Logan asks, drawing them both back to the task at hand.

“You’ll need to go to my house and find me. Convince me of all of this.”

\---

In the final moments, with the Sentinel bearing down, its formless jaws unhinging with the roar of a thousand burning suns –

Charles is grateful at least, to have Erik by his side again.

 

*

 

I’ve found him, Charles thinks, the moment his telepathy touches that brilliant mind – so beautiful and terrible and full of rage and grief – somewhere in the dark waves off the coast of Miami. He doesn’t hesitate to dive into the water, so sure of his destiny, of what awaits him when he finds the man whose mind calls out with so much unfathomable pain, and so much seething anger.

It doesn’t even bother him later, when they’ve been pulled aboard and given a dry change of clothes, to note that the man’s name – Erik, Erik Lehnsherr – has not appeared on his wrist as expected. After all, his parents’ marks formed only after they were married, and almost a year apart.

He has time, all the time in the world to wait for what he knows is inevitable.

\----

Charles’ mark never appears. Not through all their weeks recruiting other mutants, or during their trip to Russia. Not when they move into the mansion, and not before they set off to Cuba.

\----

At the hospital, Erik shows Charles the name on his wrist – during the first and only time he visits.

It appeared mere hours…after, Erik says.

_Charles_

\-----

For a while he checks his wrist constantly, rubbing at the bare flesh, willing the name to appear with equal amounts of hope and dread. He checks as he builds a School in the house that belonged to his father; he checks during the trial for the President’s murder. He checks every day, and then once, maybe twice a week. And then, after Vietnam, and days and nights when his heart bleeds and the voices scream in his head he stops checking.

He stops.

\-----

By the time a name finally appears on his wrist, Charles has long given up on ever seeing it, writing the whole notion off as useless and meaningless. It’s not as though a mark would change the way things have already happened; as though a few dark lines on his skin could wipe the slate clean.

And then one day a stranger shows up at his door, and everything changes.

\-----

The man – Logan – is gruff and surly and rubs Charles in all the wrong ways, making ridiculous assertions about a future where machines take over the world. He’s rude and insulting one moment, and then kind and all-knowing the next, throwing Charles completely off-kilter with knowledge that he’s never shared with another living soul.

Not with Raven.

Not with Erik.

\-----

“Do you have one? A name, on your wrist,” Charles asks, just before they leave to collect Logan’s friend, on their way to the Pentagon.

It’s just the two of them in the car, waiting for Hank to grab the last of his things. His own mark - brand new and completely unexpected - sets him on edge, making him feel raw and exposed.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t give Charles anything more, keeping his hands on the steering wheel and his wrists covered by his leather jacket.  

“Hey, are we ready to go?” Hank interrupts as he climbs into the car, oblivious to the brewing tension between Charles and the man from the future.

Charles leans back against the head rest and closes his eyes. “Yes, let’s get this over with.”

\-----

At the hotel, Charles checks them all into separate rooms; he needs to put some distance between himself and Erik, his stomach still in a twist from their fight and subsequent talk on the plane.

Logan pulls him aside, and waits until the other two walk past, glaring at Erik until the man shakes his head and gets into the elevator. Charles yanks his arm out of Logan’s grip as soon as the doors close and snarls, “I don’t need a fucking babysitter, alright? I can deal with Erik without your _help_.”

His anger deflates as quickly as it comes though, the moment Logan slides his sleeve up his arm and shows Charles the name on his wrist.

“You need to know that you’ve got a choice now, Chuck. You don’t _have_ to… It can be what you want it to be.”

\----

That night when Erik knocks on his door, Charles isn’t there to answer it.

\----

Things go terribly wrong at the Summit, as he should have expected.

And he’s relieved – he is, and not _disappointed_ in the least – that he didn’t sleep with Erik when he had the chance, and let that man _wreck_  him all over again.

\----

He’s still processing Logan's memories hours later, his head pillowed on the man's shoulder as the two lay entwined on Charles’ bed. Sleep is too far away to contemplate, though they’re only a few short hours from another plane ride…

This time they’re heading to Washington; to find Raven, and hopefully, to change the future.

“When did your mark appear, in your timeline?” Charles asks, running the pads of his fingertips over the letters on Logan’s skin.

“A lot later. Not in the seventies…it showed up soon after I met you, years from now. You were…older.”

Charles laughs. “I was an old man?”

He can feel Logan grinning against the top of his head. “Mature. Wise. I’d never met anyone like you. Never trusted anyone, the way I trusted, and respected you.”

“Were we…?”

“No.” Logan’s grin disappears as he shakes his head. “By the time we met, there was no room in your heart for someone new.”

Logan’s life, full of violence and betrayal, decades of wandering alone with no friends and no family, until Charles Xavier opened his home and his heart and welcomed him in.

Charles’ life, full of regret and missed opportunities, in love with a man he could never be with, the two fighting at cross purposes for the entirety of their long and lonely lives.

“A pity,” Charles mutters under his breath.

Logan shrugs. “I thought so. But then you were always a stubborn old goat.”

Charles laughs, and pulls him down for another kiss.

 

*

 

He’s drowning, his lungs flooding with water as he sinks deeper, losing the futile struggle against the metal piercing his body.

He sees Charles’ face – as it was then, and now – and wishes he’d said all the words he could never say.

Thank you.

I’ll always be there for you.

He closes his eyes.

\---

When he opens his eyes again, the whole world is born anew.  

\---

“Welcome home.”

The words are infused with warmth and humor, and Logan finds himself smiling back, the tension easing a bit from his shoulders.

“So you said. Earlier, in your office.”

“No, I said ‘Welcome back’, as in back in the right timeline,” Charles replies, as he pulls himself deftly out of the chair and into his bed, settling in next to Logan. “Now, I’m welcoming you _home_ , here with me where you belong.”

“And Magneto?”  
  
“Is where he wants to be…with his wife and his daughter. Living a relatively disaster-free life.”

It’s all too good to be true – his friends all alive, and the School full of happy students in a world free of mutant killing machines.

And Charles, holding his hand, brushing a tender, familiar kiss against his skin.

“You’re sure this is what you want? After everything that’s happened…all the sacrifices made? It wasn’t before.”

“No, it wasn’t, you’re right,” Charles agrees, still smiling at Logan, still holding his hand. “But what is life but a series of choices we make? You taught me that, all those years ago. And I chose to be better this time, and to be _happy_ , Logan. Trust me when I say, this is exactly where I want to be.”

And what could Logan – still reeling from old and new memories shifting into place, yet feeling more _whole_ than he’s ever felt in any life time – possibly do but agree?

“Me too, Chuck,” he answers. “Me too.”


End file.
